Weather
Cazatou,
Not sure where the comments about the Board considering the weather to be marginal come from - what they actually said was:
42. Weather - The Board considered that the weather information available to the crew at RAF Aldergrove prior to flight was comprehensive and adequate for the task, and the Board was content that the crew had considered the weather relevant to their flight. The Board then considered the suitability of the forecast and actual weather for the VFR flight planned by the crew. The weather documentation faxed to the crew indicated that conditions entirely suitable for helicopter low level VFR flight would prevail over the greater portion of their route, but that over coastal areas there would be an occasional risk of less favourable but acceptable conditions, and an isolated risk of conditions sufficiently poor to preclude VFR flight. These indications were reflected in the associated TAFs and METARs. Along the crews planned route, these occasional and isolated conditions would only have been expected in the area of the Mull of Kintyre, with a specific risk of a 30% probability of weather below VFR limits being forecast for Machrihanish. In the opinion of the Board, a forecast of a 30% probability of en-route weather below VFR limits was not sufficient to preclude an attempt at a VFR flight (my underlining). However, a suitable bad weather contingency plan would have been required. This might have been a VFR diversion around the bad weather, a VFR return to the point of departure, or a pre-planned climb and conversion to IFR flight (my underlining). The possibility of a lightning strike affecting the aircraft was also considered by the Board, but as there were no reports of lightning activity in the area, and no evidence of a lightning strike was found in the technical investigation, it was discounted. Similarly, the Board also considered the part that turbulence may have played in the accident and, as the aftercast indicates that the turbulence in the area was only moderate, the Board concluded that it could have provided no more than a distraction to the crew, particularly when flying in IMC. However, as the actual weather in the area of the crash site at the time of the accident was very poor, with very low cloud bases and low visibilities, the Board concluded that weather was a contributory factor in the accident.
Clearly the comment that weather was a contributory factor is a potentially valid statement, but it was also part of the Board's sudden change to the idea that the crew had decided to overfly the Mull - in itself a conclusion that has few facts to support it, and if true as you say a "suicidal" decision. In reality the fact that the waypoint change took place well before the Mull (and nobody can say with certainty exactly where) indicates that the crew had every intention of staying VFR and to their flight plan. Nobody knows why they ended up in cloud still approaching the Mull as opposed to making an abort to IFR iaw SOPs - I can only point out that there are still as many technical reasons based on known facts why this might have happened as there are operational hypotheses - and before he changed direction at paragraph 5 of his comments the Stn Cdr Odiham also pointed this out. Even more relevant read Shy Torque's posting on the operational impact of some to the then Chinook airworthiness problems.